Twins Pull an Erv Swerve, and What that Means for your Weekend

Santana ranked 67th in Zach Sanders’ postseason rankings.

Ervin Santana turned 32 today, a day after he signed a four-year, $55 million deal with the Minnesota Twins. Not only will this be a piece trying to determine his fantasy value, but perhaps a bit of an introduction to him for Twins fans.

Santana is not an ace, but rather a name Twins fans have simply heard. And with the Twins’ faithful, that’s more than half the battle. Nine of Santana’s 10 big league seasons have been spent in the American League, and he’s faced the Twins 13 times in his career with rather good success — 6-3, 3.87 ERA, 7.1 K/9.

And oddly, that’s the sort of thing that sticks with Twins fans: familiar names and Twins killers.

The expectation is that Santana will be the Twins’ No. 2 starter, and honestly that probably isn’t unreasonable. Plenty of national types weren’t a fan of the dollars or length, but it’s not as though the Twins ostensibly can’t afford it, given all everyone seems to know about ownership’s pockets. On a similar level, he’s a huge (redacted) upgrade on the likes of Kevin Correia, Mike Pelfrey, Scott Diamond and any number of other pitcher who has made a significant number of starts in the past few years for the Twins and been not particularly good.

A similar battle in that respect is that when you aren’t a good team, it’s pretty hard to attract top-end talent. The Twins’ brass has insisted in recent years that they’ve had offers out for guys, only to be jilted by a better team with a more competitive offer, and I don’t mean money-wise.

Nevertheless, Santana is an upgrade. Maybe not necessarily to the level that he’ll be paid, but he’s the kind of guy who would start a Game 3 of a playoff series, so to speak.

Santana fanned 8.2 batters per 9 last year; just two Twins have done that since 2011: Scott Baker and Francisco Liriano — both of whom are long, long gone. Phil Hughes came close in 2014.

Worth watching for Santana will be his batted-ball rates. In recent years he has vacillated between groundball-heavy (46.2 percent with the Royals in 2013) and fly ball heavy (35.2 percent groundball rate in 2010 with the Angels), and if that’s something he is consciously doing, that may benefit him with this Twins defense. The Twins — as currently constructed — will probably have a much better infield defense than outfield defense. Of course, that’s like saying four is bigger than two when you’re looking at a sample of 10. Torii Hunter and Oswaldo Arcia patrolling the corners won’t necessarily be pretty, though Aaron Hicks could pick up some of the slack in center.

Oddly, it didn’t matter much for Santana last year, as he had a .319 BABIP despite playing with a trio of solid defensive outfielders on the Braves. In fact, that’s just five points lower than Hughes — a notorious fly baller — had with the statuesque Twins last season. It’s probably just noise, but still — at least to me — interesting to see.

Santana brings a nice marriage of the things the Twins need and also crave: innings AND quality. Instead of settling for cheap innings a la Correia, the Twins will be sending out another pitcher every five days who will actually draw fans to their beautiful new ballpark. Five years in you wouldn’t think that’d be a problem, but here we are.

Santana is ninth in baseball in innings pitched over the last five seasons with 1036.1. Right behind him is Mark Buehrle (the guy who is known for this sort of thing), Hiroki Kuroda, C.J. Wilson and Jered Weaver. All guys who are beacons of consistency innings-wise, and otherwise good pitchers, right?

That doesn’t mean Erv is without risks. Santana has a fantastic slider, and has thrown it more than 30 percent of the time for seven years running — dating back to 2008. Sliders are a notoriously rough pitch on the arm — see Liriano, F. — and at 32 there may be some concern about how long he’ll hold up long-term. Of course, that applies to all pitchers in some form or fashion. Santana was third in baseball in slider usage rate in 2013 at 33.8 percent, behind Madison Bumgarner and Tyson Ross.

Since throwing the slider full-time, the lowest SwStr% Santana has gotten on the pitch is 17.2 percent. That’s pretty fantastic. The highest wOBA he’s allowed on the pitch in that time frame is .257, and for his career checks in at .235. Obviously how the slider goes is how Santana goes.

Santana’s fastball is also pretty good; his average velocity of 92.3 mph was just outside the MLB’s top-30 for starters, and he has reached at least 96 mph on it in all but one season (2012). He has also allowed a sub-.300 batting average on it for his career (.289) and in four of his last five seasons (2014 being the misfire).

Now to get down to brass tacks, pitching for the Twins probably does hurt Santana’s fantasy prospects. Jumping back to the AL certainly makes his strikeout rate a possible regression monster, and the Twins’ defense behind him isn’t bound to do him too many favors regardless of if he’s a batted-ball chameleon or not. But maybe the .320 BABIP is still within reach; that’s something he’s worked with before.

If the defense doesn’t help Santana in 2015 — read: it almost certainly won’t — he may be hands off until the Twins start incorporating its younger, more athletic talent in the outfield. Byron Buxton and Eddie Rosario profile as solid defenders, and Hicks is still a vastly preferable option to his teammates out there. Jordan Schafer is also an acceptable option.

Nonetheless, it may be difficult to see Santana improve on his No. 67 ranking. He came into the season ranked No. 60, and basically held steady at about $2.50. In the 60s, Santana is more like a No. 2-3 in real-life, but more of back-end waiver fodder in most 10-12 team leagues. In the end, it’ll come down to how you prefer to construct your roster. Dependability can be nice especially in deeper or AL-only leagues, but if you want to shoot for the moon in potential for someone at or around Santana in these rankings, you may be better suited looking elsewhere, like Andrew Cashner or Jake Odorizzi, both of whom are just behind Erv in these rankings.